tigertoy

Something that's going to be a limiting factor on my use of DW going forward is that there doesn't appear to be a full-featured client available. I really prefer posting through a client than through the standard web interface. Semagic sees to do everything on LJ but according to the DW wiki only works with DW by crossposting from LJ. If I want to move away from LJ I want to post directly here, not post on LJ and also have it show up here.

I've filed my taxes. They're amazingly trivial but they're still supposed to be filed.

Also got an extension for my mom, her taxes aren't so trivial.

Armored Gopher Games, my friendly local game store where I've been spending my Friday nights playing magic for the last 5 years or so, is closed. Dave the owner was burned out. Things were supposed to be arranged to sell to the original owners, but the wheels came off the deal at the last minute. Right now we don't know if it can be salvaged, and I don't really know the details but it doesn't look very good.

I went to FNM at the other game store in town, Titan Games, for the first time yesterday. Titan's not a bad place but it didn't feel like home. I don't know if it can become that for me, or if I'm going to drop out of magic again. Playing magic helped me get through some tough times, but I haven't felt as much into it the past few months as I used to. But not having it in my life feels scary.

Thanks for all the good times, Dave. I hope things work out for you. I hope things work out for me.

So, given that I was Fan Guest of Honor, I guess I owe the world a con report.

Chamabanacon was this past weekend, sent into exile by high school football. The Marriott in Normal is a very nice hotel. The only thing wrong with it is that it's not in Champaign. I remembered enough from getting lost last year to find the hotel without trouble this year, and got checked in and settled in without incident. Attendance was down this year because it's been a rough year for a lot of folks, but the people who were there were happy and welcoming. After Opening Ceremonies, headed a couple blocks down to Maggie Miley's, the local Irish pub. Just a little expensive but the food is quite good. Returned in good time for my Guest of Honor concert, which went well enough despite my not having prepared as well as I should have for it. Filking Friday night went well, though we didn't last much past midnight.

Saturday I got to a panel with toastmaster Adam Seltzer, who's an amazingly interesting person (as well as an amazingly warped songwriter). I spent some time in the dealer's room with my display of tiger stuff and memorabilia from my trip to Ecuador in 2005. At the Never Ending Filk Panel we determined that the filk record producers are becoming less record labels and more independent producers. Survived an hour in the Wolfe's Lair with Golden Guest of honor Gene Wolfe, and then got to hear some of GoH Alex Bledsoe's reading before running off to change and scribble a few lines of notes for my Guest of Honor speech. The food at the banquet was pretty good, and I guess my speech was OK, at least no one threw any tomatoes at me. I managed to play a couple of games of Dominion and then heard most of Adam's concert. Open filking went well for a couple of hours, but we were done before 1. We're all so old.

Sunday was conversations and goodbyes. I stayed for the dead dog, but it was very low key, with only a few folks staying.

There will be a Chambanacon next year. Our good friend P.J. Ralph succumbed to cancer this year, and he left his art, games, and books to the con, which raised a nice amount of money. Next year we have Seanan McGuire as our guest of honor and lots of wonderful stuff, so I'm sure all you people who couldn't make it this year will be there next year.

So I've just looked through the cards for the new Dominion set, Empires, and they look great. But I don't think another big expansion will fit in the 3 long boxes I carry my Dominion in, and I don't want to add yet another box. It already weighs a ton and takes up a lot of volume.

*grumble*

The week before last was the last time out for Hardened Scales in Standard for me (because last Friday I was at Kittencon). I finally made a few tweaks, and I want to record the final version of the deck. I got second place, and half the field was playing some version of the deck.

( deck )

After spending the week fiddling with my EDH decks, I took the same standard deck to FNM. We had 10 people. I came in 3rd, after losing in the first round to the winner.

( details )

After FNM we actually had a chaos draft. Eddie (whose last name I don't know) had 28 unique packs. We got to first draft the packs and then draft the cards. It was fun, but I was up way too late.

Standard didn't fire last week, and it looked like it would fail again this week, but 8 people were there when rush of people who showed up at 6:30 finished. I went 3-0, with the same Hardened Scales list as two weeks ago.

It's time for me to go to bed, so I won't put in the details now. If I find myself motivated, I'll add them tomorrow.

WTF? I wrote this last night, but it didn't post, and I only noticed now.

I have returned from Capricon, where in spite of my initial feelings when I looked at the schedule, I was never without enjoyable ways to occupy my time.

Friday we arrived a little late and missed the beginning of billroper's Cafe set, but I got to hear several good songs. I realized while I was hearing those that 4:00 on Friday was a badly over scheduled chunk of time. I wanted to see beamjockey's presentation on Pluto, because pretty much all I know from the New Horizons mission is what made it onto the radio, which doesn't include actually seeing the pictures. After that ended, I walked through the dealer's room, where I found a few paperbacks I wanted to buy, and noticed that there were quite a few tables of authors hawking their apparently self-published books, which I think is a good trend in general, although between my slow reading speed and my limited budget, I generally keep my book habit satisfied with mass market paperbacks. I also got a quick run through the art show. At least there still is an art show. And there was some nice art in it. Hopefully the people who have money found some they liked. Then we went to dinner at Spear's which is just across the parking lot from the hotel, but that was quite far enough to go through the gale. Spear's is a gourmet $15 hamburger place, though they have a few things that aren't served on a bun. The food is good and the portions are reasonable; it's a bit expensive but everything is in Chicago. Friday open filk went pretty well, despite the fact that we never got the lights turned all the way on.

Saturday, after I got up and had a combined breakfast/lunch in the room, I went down to the game room for a bit. I sat at an empty table, stood my Splendor box up, and read my book, and just about the time I decided to go head to the cafe, a couple of people joined me for a game. It was a good game, but it ran longer than I expected and by the time it was done it was halfway through Sassafras' set in the cafe. So I decided to play the game that one of my Splendor players was there demoing, which has gone through a successful kickstarter and is apparently now in production. In a marketing failure, in spite of the fact that after playing a couple of games and geeking about game design, I walked away not actually remembering the name of the game. I think it's Legends of somethingorother. It seemed like a fairly well designed little game, there are several different strategies/ways to get points and they can all be valid. The theme is thin. The card art is decent. If I see it in the game store and I recognize it I might get it. Then I got to the last half of Mike Nixon's set in the cafe, which I have to confess I wasn't really paying attention to, and then Three Fifths' set, which was the high point of the weekend. Three Fifths are just getting better all the time, and they had sweetmusic_27 with them, doing her magic stuff which she claims she hasn't rehearsed, but she was sounding as wonderful as the others. Then we decided we didn't want to brave the elements so we went to dinner at Saranello's with filkart and ithiriel. Saranello's is a serious restaurant that people with expensive cars who aren't staying at the hotel frequent, and by those standards its prices aren't that high. (Pastas are about $15, fancier entrees like $25.) The food is quite good, and it's really convenient to be in the hotel. Note to self: next year, get Saturday's dinner organized on Friday and get a reservation. This might even allow closing down the cafe, getting dinner, and then getting to Space Time Theater, which we missed. After dinner, I dropped by the game room, and got another game of Splendor, which was a pretty good game. I was the last player, and I managed to sneak in with 15 points, with both of the other players ready to go to 18 if they had one more turn. Then open filk, where I was very tired but managed to enjoy the music for 3 hours or so before giving in to fatigue, where of course once I staggered into bed, I couldn't get to sleep for hours.

Sunday, we got our stuff to the car and went to Toast and Jam, which was pretty nice, and then we headed out into the growing storm, since tcgtrf had skipped out on his reading due to the weather forecast. There was a little snow on the roads, but it wasn't really a problem, except that birder2's windshield washer was not working, which made seeing the road a little iffy.

So I got up this morning, and it was really cold in the house. The furnace was flashing an error code.

I called the furnace guy, and he found my house a bit more than an hour later, and saw that there was a visible hole in the igniter. (Once he pointed it out I could see it.) He tested it to be sure, and it was bad; he installed a new one; and now I have heat again. Cost a little more than I would like but not enough to really be a problem